THE CORNER | Negotiations over a Senate plan to reopen the U.S. government and extend the debt ceiling were placed on hold, then renewed on Tuesday evening. Rhetoric and accusations between republicans and democrats are intensifying, as the fateful day approaches. Will the U.S. default on its obligations?
Markets have started the week in a relatively directionless fashion amid slow-moving progress in Washington, Barclays analysts point out. That lack of decision could make the Fed delay the tapering until 2014, keeping downward pressure on the USD.
WASHINGTON | By Mike Konczal via The Next New Deal | There was a fantastic piece in The Atlantic back in 2000 about psychiatrists dealing with people who wanted to have their limbs cut off because it would make them feel more like themselves to be amputees. The doctors’ big dilemma was whether or not to treat “apotemnophilia” as a diagnosable mental illness. If they engaged with it as a mental illness that existed and was recognized by the medical community, they ran the risk of encouraging more patients to identify with it.